PORTLAND, Maine – Power – who yields it, who wants it – is the oxygen of politics everywhere. In Washington, power now rests firmly in the hands of the Republicans, who control the presidency, Congress and now, finally, the U.S. Supreme Court.

When historians write the history of Donald Trump’s presidency, July 9, 2018 may well be its zenith. It’s the day that the president nominated (with the Senate expected to confirm) a fifth conservative justice to the court, making it a full, dues-paying branch of the Republican Party.

The Supreme Court has had ideological phases before – liberal in the 1960s, conservative back in the 1930s – but it was not seen as wholly Democratic or Republican. In a less polarized country, the “liberal” Warren Court was led by Earl Warren, who was governor of California before he was named chief justice by President Dwight Eisenhower. Both Warren and Eisenhower were Republicans.

With Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanagh, who worked for president George W. Bush, the Republicans can now lay claim to a majority of right-leaning appointees on the court. They expect Kavanagh will join three other ideological soul mates and Chief Justice John Roberts to form a conservative majority.

Theoretically, this means they will have the votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the right to abortion. It means the court can overturn advances on same-sex marriage and universal health care, on protecting guns and on sustaining unlimited money in politics.

Of course, there is no way to know how Kavanagh will vote; other Republican nominees have been more moderate than expected, disappointing hardliners. But that is unlikely here.

Otherwise Kavanagh would not be on a list of the Federalist Society, a conservative judicial group that vets nominees. It doesn’t have to ask a nominee how he or she will vote; having followed the person’s record, they know. That’s why chances are good that if Kavanagh is confirmed by the Senate, he will deliver for conservatives, just as Justice Neil Gorsuch has.

For a president who is all politics and no principles, keen to appease his baying loyalists, this is a godsend.

Again, as some jurists note, it may not turn out quite this way. If Kavanagh is confirmed after a bruising process the Democrats promise, any of these things could happen: The court might weaken abortion rights without abolishing them; Kavanagh (or Gorsuch) might unexpectedly dissent; Roberts, worried about a divided society, could become the swing vote that Justice Anthony Kennedy was for so long.

Ah, Justice Kennedy. It is his resignation that opened a vacancy, giving Trump his second appointment in 18 months. For a president who is all politics and no principles, keen to appease his baying loyalists, this is a godsend.

But it shows, once again, the uses of power. The president courted Kennedy and assured him it was safe for him to resign his seat while Trump is in office. If Kennedy, a moderate, were really worried about who might replace him, he could have waited for another president or another Senate.

But Kennedy is a Republican. They play politics harder than the Democrats, which is why they refused to hold Senate hearings in 2016 on Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s highly esteemed nominee, to replace the late Antonin Scalia. Then they changed the rules to ensure that just 50, rather than 60, senators were needed to confirm a nominee. In effect, they stole the seat.

That is power exercised ruthlessly and shamelessly. This autumn, though, things may change. The Democrats will win back the House, ending Trump’s presidency legislatively. With Democrats in control of one chamber, he will pass nothing.

If the Democrats retake the Senate, which is less likely, they will block more conservative judicial nominees, as they have in the past.

Trump, caught between the encroaching investigation of Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the confessions of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, will find himself somewhere between impeachment (now) and criminal indictment (later). At minimum, he may remain in office as a paralyzed president.

There will be more vacancies on the Supreme Court, yes, with the retirement of more octogenarian justices. But as political power realigns in Washington, as it surely will, consider Kavanagh the last of the unreconstructed judicial conservatives.

Andrew Cohen is a journalist, professor and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.

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